Just as the economy seems to be stabilizing, the price tag of the government’s rescue could hit an eye-popping $23.7 trillion — double what many analysts thought.

The sobering assessment, by the US Treasury’s special inspector general, Neil Barofsky, marks the first formal review of the government’s efforts to blunt damage from the economic meltdown that began more than a year ago. Barofsky is scheduled to deliver his report today to a House oversight committee.

The startling price tag represents the total of direct spending with all programs and government guarantees and amounts to “gross exposure” that Uncle Sam would face if every dime in every program was spent.

But even before his stunning report was formally presented, it drew immediate criticism last night from the Treasury itself, which protested that some of the numbers were inflated.

For example, the Treasury said that $3.4 trillion pledged to guarantee money-market mutual funds will expire in a few months, and hasn’t even been tapped yet. The Treasury also said that all programs cited by Barofsky in his report amounted in “actual cash outlays to date to less than $2 trillion.”

The two sides also disagree on what’s left from the $700 billion cash that Congress approved in a blank-check emergency bill last fall, the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program. Barofsky said that former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and his successor, Tim Geithner, had distributed $441 billion of the TARP money; the Treasury said that about $643 billion of TARP cash has been publicly distributed. In any event, the huge dollar amounts infuriated lawmakers.

“If you spent a million dollars a day, going back to the birth of Christ, that wouldn’t even come close to just $1 trillion — the $23.7 trillion is a staggering figure,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

Barofsky’s report also included $7.2 trillion that Uncle Sam plowed into the government takeovers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, plus another $3.2 trillion in a separate program from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Barofsky insisted that the whole package, no matter how big, must be made public before it can be properly reviewed.

“Before the American people and their representatives in Congress can meaningfully evaluate the effectiveness of TARP, not only must the TARP programs themselves be understood, but also TARP’s scope and scale must be placed into proper context with other government programs designed to support the financial system,” he said.